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‘He was the type of person you’d want your own son to grow up to be,’ says grieving York University coach of former player killed in Humboldt Broncos crash

Mark Cross was a hometown hockey boy from Saskatchewan, who had returned to the province where he grew up playing junior hockey to take on a role as assistant coach of the Humboldt Broncos. His life, with so many others, was torn short on Friday when the team’s bus was involved in a crash on a rural road.

But entwined with his prairie roots, Cross was also a York Lion for five years — graduating as the MVP of the York University men’s hockey team in Toronto. And as grief reverberates worldwide from the crash in rural Saskatchewan, through Cross, its ripples have hit Toronto.

Mark Cross, an assistant coach with the Humboldt Broncos who died in Friday’s crash, was “pure and simple, the heart and soul of that hockey team,” said Russ Herrington, who coached Cross when he played for the York University men’s hockey team. (York University)

“He was, pure and simple, the heart and soul of that hockey team,” said Russ Herrington, then assistant coach of the York team.

Cross was the conduit between the dressing room and the coaches; the one they relied on to deliver a message, to set a tone for a practice. “Mark was a guy who, with one look to his teammates, could completely change the focus and the intensity of what’s going on,” Herrington said.

In 25 years of coaching, he said he couldn’t remember players openly referring to another player as their “idol” before Cross.

He recalls two goals he scored, one at home and one away, in his final playoff round. He remembers the image of Cross — crushed when they lost those playoffs — realizing he’d played his final game as a Lion. The pair had an “emotional, sentimental” conversation about his years in Toronto at their final athletic banquet.

“The thing with Mark was, it was never about him. He expressed to me and to the other coaches, just his appreciation of what we did for him. And he didn’t realize, I don’t think, how much he did for us,” Herrington, who is the York team’s current coach, said, his voice heavy with emotion.

“He was that type of kid, you know? He was the type of person you’d want your own son to grow up to be, in every aspect of his life,” Herrington said. “He was the type of guy I always wanted to see coach, because I knew he was going to be able to impact lives of people and young men.”

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“There was no better mentor they could have than Mark Cross.”

Herrington said the team’s biggest concern right now is how Cross’s long-term girlfriend, Molly, and his family are doing. Molly was also a York graduate, who’d spent five years as a student staff member in Athletics & Recreation. “You could see the admiration and love between them,” Herrington said.

York teammate Tyler Mort said the couple had moved from Saskatchewan to Toronto together to go to school. He estimated they’d been together around 10 years. “They were crazy in love,” he said. They’d take classes together, study together, eat together — every part of their lives was entwined.

Mort played with Cross for four years, and said that whenever they had new players, Cross made sure they were welcomed, and that they were happy. “He always worked hard. He looked after everybody, made sure everybody was involved,” Mort said. “He was the best, at everything.”

George Grammenopoulos, another teammate of Cross’s on the York team, described him as a genuine, kind man who consistently looked for the good in his teammates. “He was always that one guy who was stable in what he believed and what he knew,” he said.

“It was how he was with every single guy on the team. He never, ever wanted to see anyone else fail.”

Grammenopoulos says he knows that Cross would have imparted all the values he showed as a Lion on the younger Broncos boys — as well as an example of “what it is to become a man.”

“That’s the exact sort of values he displayed on our team,” he said. “That’s the sort of things he’d have instilled in them there.”

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